Published September 18, 2010
We Are the Mad Artist
the portraits of Alone haunt me through the day.
they greet me in the morning,
shards of sunlight, happy jailstripes on the kitchen sink,
drowning in dirty, broken dishes.
they spit me from the house,
leaving the sleeping mother to sleep away the aches
of head and heart,
and they follow me down the time-cracked sidewalk:
they paste their bloodshot eyes my way,
and steer their glass bottle carts clear of my
home-soaked hands.
they sigh in frustration, humiliation
at the empty, gum-peppered desks, and scream
silently at the filled:
listen, listen. learn, remember, change. Be.
they black-and-blue those inculpable faces,
and take the black and blue in turn.
they cough, sniff, sob, retch
behind the peeling, creaking, storyboard
of love and hate,
of portraits of people trying to make love, prove hate,
and justify the presence of everything
and the absence of everything else.
their grating voices glare through the torn black
mesh of the front door,
long before my creaking footsteps cross the porch.
the portraits of Alone yell, scream, cry, wonder,
throw, crash, hide, bleed,
beg, pray, wish, hope, wonder, and sleep.
They stare back at me through the window of nothing,
the black, blue, yellow painted glass man
more real than the broken, breathing dead.
but the portraits of Alone are never-ending
in the windows of nothing.
when the painted glass men become the dead,
and the broken, breathing look away,
they all become the portraits of Alone,
and they all become the portraits.
and they all become.
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Hi there!
I didn't really gather the same meaning that Tiger did. I sort of got that the portraits was, essentially, everyday life and all the negativity along with it. What the speaker sees in life, I suppose. Which, following my gathering of the poem, the title possibly means, that we, as humanity, created all the sadness and destruction negativity.
I could be way off, of course. I didn't read what you said because I was afraid it would have what the meaning was, which would rather ruin my own interpretations.
Anyway, I don't have anything really nitpicky to say about this piece. So instead I'll just say that I love the following:
Great.
Keep Writing!
--Sporks
well actually, there is no artwork in this poem, nor museums. "Portraits of Alone" is an abstract term for all of the things that this guy sees everyday, and all the different ways people are alone, or feel alone. Hungover mothers, druggies, homeless people, frustrated teachers, bitter students, fighting parents, abused kids; everyone looking in their own mirror at their own loneliness, not noticing that loneliness is everywhere, but it doesn't have to be.
This is the kind of poem that I don't understand. I got a general vibe of sadness, anger and pain (and of course loneliness), and it seems really emotional. From what I can gather, the narrator either lives in or is visiting a museum/gallery past the time when it would normally be closed, and contemplating the future of all the artwork and the future of the artwork that has not yet reached the gallery. Or something like that.